My grandmother took a bunch of photo albums and boxes down from a closet and told me about how her mother’s family name was shortened — Americanized — after they passed through Ellis Island. I sifted through the photos, examining each one and listening to the stories my grandmother remembered about the people staring back at me in shades of black and grey, chins and noses pronounced, hair dark.

--snip---

Suddenly, the relative safety and privilege that I grew up with as a white American Jew has cracked wide open, revealing the rotten underbelly that’s always been here, the one I have chosen not to see. Anti-Semitic hate crimes are at their highest levels in years. Jewish Community Centers around the country are getting bomb threats at an alarming rate. Steve Bannon, an anti-Semite, is in the White House. Swastikas appear like hideous confetti, decorating walls and buildings all over the country. Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. This hatred is not new; it has been here all along. But its brashness is something new. It is meaner, darker, more ominous. It is more urgent. It is knocking on my door, begging to come in.

And while President Trump may have reminded us about his Jewish family members, and assured us at a recent press conference that we’re “going to see a lot of love” under his administration, so far, I don’t see it. And using his family to prove he isn’t anti-Semitic is about as effective as using one’s black friend to prove they’re not racist. It’s empty, hollow, a silencing tactic. Of course, there are other communities that have much more to be afraid of under Trump’s reign, marginalized people whose fears are more urgent and are already playing out in devastating ways via ICE raids, deportations, and imminent threats of violence. People of color in America who have been afraid their entire lives, for whom this kind of fear is not new. A fear that my grandparents and their parents felt, that my own children may, too. A fear that has turned walking into synagogue with my family into an act of bravery.

---snip---

We come from the oppressed and, mostly, we have become privileged through the assimilation of many Jews into whiteness. But with assimilation and privilege can come complacency, which is something that many white Jews like myself and the people I grew up with can fall into all too easily. It is through complacency that we forget even the recent past, the Holocaust of only two generations ago. It is through complacency that we can become perpetrators of the oppression we were once victims of via a vote for Trump or a belief in marginalized people’s ability to “bootstrap” their way to success.

---snip---

Our existence is resistance in and of itself, but it’s time to do more. Today I teach my children to assert our faith and become part of a Jewish community when once again the world tells us that we don’t deserve to exist. But we do deserve to exist, and we will fight for that right, just like we always have.

While the United States has been observing a week devoted to marking the loss of millions of Jews and other nationals during the Nazi Holocaust in World War II, a Democratic candidate for the New York City Council is campaigning on a message of anti-Semitism and hate.

In the most recent video footage uploaded by Thomas Lopez-Pierre, his campaign message on YouTube blames “greedy Jewish landlords” and “Donald Trump” for the problems in the seventh district on the upper West Side of Manhattan.

Lopez-Pierre is running in a primary set for September 12th against incumbent New York City Council member Mark Levine, who is Jewish, and who he accuses of “taking $100,000 in political money from greedy Jewish landlords.”

Democrat Jon Ossoff, who placed first in the special election for Georgia’s sixth congressional district with 48% of the vote but who needed 50% to avoid a runoff, overcame a great deal of adversity.

---snip---

Will Kremer, reporting for georgiapol.com, observed that one of the Republican candidates in the race, Mohammad Ali Bhuiyan, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page, “As you know, Jon Ossoff (an Orthodox Jew) has already accepted millions from special interest groups and will be under the control of Jared Kushner (Trump’s Son-in-Law) and in turn under the control of Donald Trump.”

Other Facebook posts also highlighted the “connection” between Kushner and Ossoff.

Bhuiyan, a Muslim Republican who ultimately won a scant .022 percent of the vote in the special election, also took shots at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at a candidate forum, calling it a “Jewish-owned newspaper.”

Ossoff, who marketed himself as a moderate, also found it necessary to criticize the “deeply offensive” words from his political mentor, Rep. Hank Johnson, who labeled Jewish settlers in Israel as “termites,” according to the Atlanta Jewish Times. But that didn’t keep the Democrat from being accused of having ties to Al-Jazeera, “a mouthpiece for terrorists,” in a commercial funded by a super PAC affiliated with House speaker Paul Ryan (Ossoff’s documentary film production company counted the cable channel as a client).

Yom Hazikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah (יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה; "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day&quot, known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah (יום השואה and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. It was inaugurated in 1953, anchored by a law signed by the Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and the President of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. It is held on the 27th of Nisan (April/May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Jewish Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.[1]

On the eve of Yom HaShoah and the day itself, places of public entertainment are closed by law. Israeli television airs Holocaust documentaries and Holocaust-related talk shows, and low-key songs are played on the radio. Flags on public buildings are flown at half mast. At 10:00 a.m., an air raid siren sounds throughout the country and Israelis are expected to observe two minutes[9] of solemn reflection. Almost everyone stops what they are doing, including motorists who stop their cars in the middle of the road, standing beside their vehicles in silence as the siren is sounded.[10]

NEW YORK — The Anti-Defamation League found an increase in cases of anti-Semitic intimidation and vandalism last year, evidence that anti-Jewish bias intensified during the election.

The Jewish civil rights group found 1,266 cases of anti-Semitic harassment last year, compared to 941 in 2015 and 912 in 2014. The increase continued into the first three months of this year, with reports of 541 incidents compared to 291 in the same period the year before, according to the ADL data released Monday.

The preliminary 2017 numbers include a wave of more than 150 bomb threats that started in January against Jewish community centers and day schools. Authorities arrested an Israeli Jewish hacker who they said was behind the harassment. The ADL insists those threats should still be considered anti-Semitic since Jews were the target. During the same period, a former journalist in St. Louis was also charged with threatening Jewish organizations as part of a bizarre campaign to intimidate his former girlfriend. But authorities believe the Israeli man is primarily responsible.

Even without those bomb threats, the number of anti-Jewish incidents this January, February and March in the report would be higher than the year before.

History is important. So is recognizing denial and re-writing of history and the enablers who want to discuss anything but the destruction of the Jewish people as they provide cover to the deniers and anti-Semites!

It was the eve of Passover and the Germans were advancing into the Warsaw Ghetto in order to deport the remaining Jews to death camps throughout Poland. They refused to go to the slaughter quietly and rebelled. It lasted less than a month (May 16th), and 13,000 Jews were murdered, they fought! They resisted! They stood up as a people!

13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising (some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation). Of the remaining 50,000 residents, most were captured and shipped to concentration and extermination camps, in particular to Treblinka.

"180 Jews, bandits and sub-humans, were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 20:15 hours by blowing up the Warsaw Synagogue. ... Total number of Jews dealt with 56,065, including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved. ... Apart from 8 buildings (police barracks, hospital, and accommodations for housing working-parties) the former Ghetto is completely destroyed. Only the dividing walls are left standing where no explosions were carried out."[29]

According to the casualty lists in Stroop's report, German forces suffered a total of 110 casualties – 17 dead (of whom 16 were killed in action) and 93 injured – of whom 101 are listed by name, including over 60 members of the Waffen-SS. These figures did not include Jewish collaborators, but did include the "Trawniki men" and Polish police under his command. The real number of German losses, however, may be well higher (the Germans suffered about 300 casualties by Edelman's estimate). For propaganda purposes, the official announcement claimed the German casualties to be only a few wounded, while propaganda bulletins of the Polish Underground State announced that hundreds of occupiers had been killed in the fighting.

German daily losses of killed/wounded and the official figures for killed or captured Jews and "bandits", according to the Stroop report:
According to Israel Gutman, "the number cited by Stroop (16 dead, 85 wounded) cannot be rejected out of hand, but it is likely that his list was neither complete, free of errors, nor indicative of the German losses throughout the entire period of resistance, until the absolute liquidation of Jewish life in the ghetto. All the same, the German casualty figures cited by the various Jewish sources are probably highly exaggerated."[56] Other historians such as Raul Hilberg and French L. MacLean endorse the accuracy of official German casualty figures.[57][58] On the other hand, Stroop report vastly exaggerated actual losses (and strength) of the resistance.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.[59]